


Secretary Asagiri

by MeltyRum



Category: Made in Abyss (Anime), Persona 3, VA-11 Hall-A (Video Game), 龍が如く | Ryuu ga Gotoku | Yakuza (Video Games)
Genre: Dialogue, F/F, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:21:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22167040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeltyRum/pseuds/MeltyRum
Summary: Sei Asagiri but she's a member of the yakuza. Reflects on old friends and chills with her boss.
Relationships: Sei Asagiri/Ozen
Kudos: 3
Collections: Boku no Hero Academia x Persona





	Secretary Asagiri

Shutting the door to Ozen’s empty office behind her with a small sigh, Sei Asagiri took the paperwork she had retrieved and slipped it into her to-do pile. It had initially surprised her how much legitimate business was involved in day-to-day yakuza activity—yes, even in the areas which were overseen by Ozen, who was all-too-happy to have someone else go through the headache of referencing tax documents and doing sums. Sei had learned early on that Ozen wasn’t a fan of that sort of thing.

But for that matter, what _was_ Ozen a fan of? Only Ozen seemed to know what Ozen liked or wanted, and—inexplicably—Sei seemed to be included in that narrow set, so she had learned to be happy about that.

After preparing herself a cup of cheap tea from the small office’s kitchenette, she sat back down at her desk to start taking care of some documentation. There was a written complaint from one of the small business districts that she needed to finish drafting a resolution to before Ozen caught wind of it, or else they might never receive a complaint from them again! And although that sounded like a good thing, Sei figured that it was better to have mildly disgruntled business under your purview than it was to have no business at all. Ozen could naturally be very convincing, but when she _wasn’t_ convincing, it usually meant one less shop on the street.

Just as Sei was about to put pen to paper, a guest sauntered into their office area, knowing exactly where he was going. He passed her desk, stepped up to Ozen’s door, and stopped cold, looking up and down its length before letting out a weary sigh.

“She’s not in right now, is she?” asked Tsukasa Sagawa, sounding a little exasperated.

Sei courteously rose to her feet, giving her superior officer a friendly bow. “I’m afraid not, Sagawa-san. Ozenhad some business to attend to across town and I’m not certain when she’ll be back. I can let her know you came by, though—or pass on a message.”

“No… it’s fine. I’d better wait,” he muttered, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Should have guessed she might not be in, anyway. Is it collections? She usually has you handle that, doesn’t she?”

“Not this time!” she responded diplomatically, setting her documentation aside to fetch him some tea of his own. “She wouldn’t tell me the details, actually. You may have to ask her yourself, Sagawa-san.”

She set the steaming cup of tea down upon the nearby coffee table—which Sagawa chose to ignore, instead following Sei back to her desk. As he looked over the barely-organized piles of paper before her, Sei saw his lips curl a little, but she couldn’t tell if he was amused or if he was pitying her.

Before she could offer him any other office space hospitality, Sagawa helped himself to a bare corner of her desk, seating himself on it as he continued to examine what she was working on. She thought she caught a nostalgic twinkle in his eye and wondered if he used to do this sort of secretarial labor in _his_ early years as a yakuza, too. “I guess you’re not the only one she has handling this, but she seems to be trusting you with quite a bit, Asagiri-kun.”

“I think I’ve got a good idea of how she likes to do things, is all,” she replied, smiling. “Aneki still handles all of the most important paperwork—and it’s not my primary task either, for that matter—but I think I’m getting used to it. Since I have to brief her on most of it anyway, it’s not like she isn’t involved.”

“Makes sense. I’m just surprised it’s _you_ she gives this to, since you’re in collections, not accounting. But I’m guessing the reason is just as mysterious to you as it is to me. I suppose it just means she’s too cheap for a proper accountant… or trusts you too much,” he hypothesized, eyes continuing to inspect various sheets here and there.

She chuckled, feeling a little flattered. “I hope that’s the case! I want to be useful, after all; at any rate, I didn’t really think my being here would interest you that much, Sagawa-san. Er… if you don’t mind my saying so.”

He shook his head dismissively. “If this weren’t Ozen, I _wouldn’t_ be interested. But since Ozen herself is interested in you—for some reason—I suppose I can’t help wanting to try and figure out why. It’s not as though she’d tell me if I asked.” He smirked, taking—to Sei’s horror—a little bundle of papers which had been carefully tucked under some very boring-looking documentation.

Sei tried to act as though there was nothing unusual about them, hoping he would ignore the bundle just as he had ignored the tea.

“Tabloids?” He started leafing through them with a puzzled expression on his face.

“Um… yes!” responded Sei, trying to control her slightly-fraught nerves. “Just something for light reading. You know, in between loan and real estate papers… call it a guilty pleasure.” Her voice cracked as she tried to laugh it off.

“Heh. As expected, you’re not a very good liar, Asagiri-kun.” He continued to look at the cover of each magazine, examining pictures and headlines, occasionally doubling back to check a previous issue, as though he’d figured out what it was that connected them all. Sei felt her stomach sink a little bit when she saw his lips silently form a name, followed by a satisfactory nod.

“Seems you have a remarkable interest in this Hoshii-san, Asagiri-kun. Doesn’t look like coincidence, at least. She’s on the cover of half of these.” He laid the papers down with a firm slap, like so much incriminating evidence. “Want to explain yourself?”

Sei let out a brief sigh of defeat, not seeing a way out of this. “I guess you could say I’ve followed her career for a while, so…” she trailed off, bashfully scratching one of her temples. “Are you sure you want to hear about this, Sagawa-san? It’s nothing that concerns the organization,” she added hopefully.

“Look,” he started, “it’s not like I came here to interrogate you, but Ozen isn’t here and you are and now I’m waiting around. Not too much to ask to keep an old man company, is it?” he asked, smiling. Friendly as he was, Sagawa’s smiles always seemed a little bit dangerous, too—in contrast to Ozen’s, which seemed _very_ dangerous at _all_ times.

The junior yakuza considered Sagawa’s words for a moment, although it seemed there was only one right answer. “I suppose that’s fair,” she conceded, smiling in return and trying to think of it as a neighborly conversation. “It sort of has to do with why I decided to join the Shimada Clan in the first place.”

Sagawa nodded knowingly. “You’re probably talking about how Ozen saved you when you were a kid or something like that, right?”

Sei blinked in amazement, wondering how he knew that. Although she hadn’t exactly kept it secret, she was still surprised to see that such a thing had ended up rising to Sagawa-san’s attention. “Um, yes, that’s exactly right,” she admitted somewhat lamely, for a moment uncertain what to follow with.

“Ozen told me something about it,” he recalled, promptly deflating Sei’s surprise. “Doesn’t explain why she’s taken such a shine to you, but it does explain why you’re so fond of _her_. Anyway, what does that have to do with Stella Hoshii?”

Sei wondered how to answer that for a second. “Well, before I can answer that: do you remember the attack in which Hoshii-san lost her eye? It would have happened a couple decades ago.”

He nodded reasonably. “Sure, I remember. She was in a park or something when some guy took her hostage. Rogue yakuza, or something… ended up cutting out her eye. Guess the cops showed up and she got out okay, other than that. Pretty bad business, though, hurting kids. Didn’t he injure some other girl, too?”

Sei brightened, pleased he remembered the news so well. “Right! That was me,” she said helpfully.

One of Sagawa’s eyebrows rose dramatically up into his forehead. “Sorry. Are you saying that you’ve met Hoshii-san? And _that_ was when you met?”

“Yes, that’s right. I happened to meet her back then; I don’t know if I would say we were ‘friends’, but…” She thought about it for a moment, deciding there were probably parts of the story he didn’t know. “This didn’t really occur to me at the time, but it looked like he wanted to get money from her family, or something like that. He hurt me pretty bad when I tried to stop him from taking her eye; that broke a few bones, but I guess I turned out alright. Or—what I mean is that I didn’t have to get anything… replaced. It was pretty bad, though. I can still kind of remember the feeling, actually,” she chuckled uneasily, deciding that part didn’t warrant any detail; Sagawa had probably seen his share of fights, anyway… or worse. “Anyway, that’s when Ozen showed up.”

Again, it appeared as though Sagawa had to do a mental double-take. “Ozen? We’re still talking about you and Stella Hoshii, aren’t we?”

She nodded. “Ozen is the one who showed up to stop that guy. Rogue yakuza, like you said; I get the feeling he was probably one of Ozen’s own men. I’ve seen similar things since I came to work here. A lot of her men seem to misunderstand her; since Ozen relies so much on her strength, they equate that with being a bully—or think that being a bully is what she expects from them—and end up making a lot of poor decisions.” That was pretty typical for yakuza, now that she thought about it.

“Alright, but…” Sagawa scratched his scalp, looking a little skeptical. “I’m certain that the news said the cops defused the situation.”

“Eventually, they did! That’s how Stella—I mean, Hoshii-san—and I ended up in the hospital, ultimately. But Ozen dealt with the thug before that. I admit I can’t recall that much after she showed up—I was probably crying a lot—but I definitely remember how scary it was when she first arrived. It was hard to tell if she was a good guy.” She laughed a little.

Sagawa, retaining his look of skepticism at hearing Ozen referred to as a “good guy”, seemed to accept this. “So her rescuing you happened to be the same incident involving Hoshii-san. Fair enough; I’ll assume you’re telling the truth for now, and not some kind of obsessed stalker. That explains why you’ve got all of these?” He started perusing one of the tabloids, jumping to whatever article was trying to scandalize Stella.

“I’ve just always been curious about how she’s getting by,” she admitted. “I barely remember what she was like as a child, so I don’t want to say I _miss_ her, but sometimes I feel like it would be nice to meet up with her again. She probably doesn’t even remember me, though.”

“Oh, I imagine she remembers every second of that day,” said Sagawa grimly. “Anyway, you may be in luck, considering what she’s up to in these recent ones.” He turned the tabloid toward her, pointing to a picture of Stella at dinner. “This woman she’s with sure looks a lot like you, doesn’t she? The hair, at least. Maybe she’s still got some fond memories of you.”

Though she tried to prepare for it, Sei still felt a bit of a sting at the sight of the photo. It was true, though: there was Stella Hoshii, sitting and (apparently) having fun with another woman who looked remarkably similar to Sei. It would be hard to pick her out of a crowd on the street, but even plenty of yakuza knew who Yamagishi-san was—if only because a few of them had been on the receiving end of a rubber volley from Aigis and suddenly needed to know who was responsible. As Sei had been keeping up on news of the Hoshii scion for some time, she probably could have traceda line all the way back to the issue where Fuuka first made her appearance, enjoying an expensive dinner with the one-eyed philanthropist.

They must have really hit it off, Sei thought. It seemed as though Fuuka was present for half of Stella’s public appearances since then.Some of the more insidious tabloids had even theorized that the two must have developed an intimate romantic relationship. Sei had no truck with those claims, but the pair _did_ seem to be quite friendly with one another. Anyway, everyone knew that Yamagishi had been married to a man, so what were the odds? Watching the two of them make friends was bittersweet enough.

And yes, Sei knew it was ridiculous to feel jealous about Stella making other acquaintances. For one thing, it had been almost twenty years since they’d seen each other; for another, Sei and Yamagishi only looked similar by coincidence, unless there was some familial conspiracy the two of them hadn’t known about… but the chances of that were vanishingly small. Yet, for some reason, the situation gave her a little pang of longing. She’d been there first, after all.

“You could be right, Sagawa-san,” she murmured, trying not to let too much discomfort into her voice. “It’s definitely not impossible. But it’s not as though I’ve got her information available, so I won’t be asking directly,” she remarked with a smile.

He nodded with a thin smirk, picking up a different magazine to poke through. “I suppose you’re right about that. Well, her family business is probably connected with the yakuza one way or another, but I can’t say I know anything about it—could be associated with a different clan, for all I know; but if that wasn’t the case, we might be able to find an in for you.”

Sei blinked for a second, finding such suppositions to be a little out of character for him. “There’s no reason for you to be invested in that, Sagawa-san. Keeping up with her is just sort of a hobby of mine. I’ve got plenty of friends here!”

“Mhm. Friends,” he grunted doubtfully. “Honestly, it amazes me each time I see you, Asagiri-kun: a young woman like you running around collecting for Ozen? Obviously you get the job done or you wouldn’t even be here, but it’s hard to imagine from the look of you,” he sighed, apparently unapologetic in sharing these impressions. “Back when I’d first joined, the idea of having a woman join our brotherhood would’ve been laughed at. Or… it would’ve until Ozen’s name started getting known, I suppose,” he added, chuckling dryly.

Sei just smiled politely, deciding there was no point reminding him that things always change. Quirks had leveled the field in many ways, after all.

“You really joined the clan just because Ozen saved you once?” he asked suddenly.

Sei coughed into her fist, clearing her throat. “When you ask it like that, I guess it does sound a little bit odd,” she responded, amused. “If a cop or a hero had been first to the scene, I probably would have wanted to become one of those instead. Maybe I’m a little too impressionable? But aneki was really cool that day,” she mused, briefly allowing herself to be lost in reminiscence once again.

She really had been lucky to end up under Ozen’s command—and luckier _still_ to have ended up working with her directly. Not to mention the amount of—ah, recreational time—which they spent together. It was hard to escape the excitement that came from being so close and carnal with someone who could easily snap you like a twig. Sei _would_ say “intimate” but, with Ozen in the picture, “carnal” was simply a better word. It was sex, but it wasn’t really _making love_.

For as much as Sei admired—and even loved—her aneki, their relationship wasn’t exactly bursting with romance. In true yakuza style, it was a loving,sisterly, and distinctly _uneven_ relationship—as though she had a sister who was unrelated to her, was three decades older, and who also took great satisfaction in tough love at work and tougher love in bed. Many a day of successful criminal activity had passed in and out of her offices, only to be followed—at night—by other illicit activities, such as finding out how many fingers she could disappear into her favorite assistant.

For that matter, Ozen often didn’t have the patience to wait until the evening. It was far more than paperwork and tea which passed over (and under) Ozen’s desk.

Sei looked up, realizing her face was growing a bit warm.

“Oh—sorry! I was… I was double-checking this form. Were you saying something?” she asked, as innocently as she could manage, hoping he couldn’t hear her pounding heart.

Sagawa gave a small grunt of annoyance, but shook his head. “Nothing important. Just wondering if this really is the career for you—no offense. Speaking long-term, it doesn’t work out for most young recruits, so you’re lucky to have Ozen’s attention.”

“Well, it certainly seems to have worked out for you, sir,” she replied serenely, feeling her body calm down a little. She shifted in her seat a little bit.

“That’s true,” he agreed, apparently thinking of something else for a moment. With the clairvoyance and heightened sense of awareness only afforded to those who had recently been entertaining naughty thoughts, she could tell that something dirty had just crossed his mind, too. Maybe those rumors about his live-in maid were true… but Sei decided not to risk asking, instead turning politely back to her work.

“She really takes her time, doesn’t she,” he murmured eventually, standing up from the edge of Sei’s desk. “I’m going to go make a call. If Ozen somehow sneaks past me, let her know I was here, alright? I’ll go see if there’s any news about Hoshii-san while I’m out,” he said, chuckling darkly and giving her a dismissive wave as he turned to go.

A sense of dread seated itself within Sei as she watched him go, wondering if he was being serious. She realized with some discomfort that Sagawa was probably the kind of man to tell Ozen all about their little chat, once he finally found her. Sei had never told Ozen about the tabs she was keeping on Stella, assuming it wasn’t something that would interest her… and it wasn’t unreasonable to think that Ozen might already have an eye on Stella, having protected her in the past.

Either way, Sei hoped that Ozen would be merciful.


End file.
